Temple of Artemis Ephesus
“I have set eyes on the wall of lofty Babylon on which is a road for chariots, and the statue of Zeus by the Alpheus, and the hanging gardens, and the colossus of the Sun, and the huge labour of the high pyramids, and the vast tomb of Mausolus; but when I saw the house of Artemis that mounted to the clouds, those other marvels lost their brilliancy, and I said, ‘Lo, apart from Olympus, the Sun never looked on aught so grand.'”
Antipater of Sidon, Greek Anthology (IX.58)
Designed by the architect Chersiphron, with many of the Ionic columns erected at the expense of Croesus (Herodotus, The Histories, I.92), the fabulously wealthy king of Lydia (ruled 560–546 BC), the Temple of Artemis (Artemisium) at Ephesus was the first to be entirely of marble and one of the largest Greek temples ever built, measuring some 377 feet in length and 180 feet wide (larger by twenty feet on a side than a football field). It was constructed on marshy ground so as not to be in danger from earthquakes, and the foundation laid on a bed of packed charcoal and sheepskins (Pliny, Natural History, XXXVI. 21).
The huge column drums and architraves were moved from the quarry by fitting them with large wheels and then, like rolling axles, pulled by oxen (Vitruvius, On Architecture, X.2.11–12).
Pliny goes on to say that the temple had 127 columns, each sixty feet high. Vitruvius (III.2.7) describes it as dipteral octastyle, that is, two rows of columns around the temple with eight on the front and rear façades. The few scattered artifacts, however, do not reveal a ground plan. One arrangement of the requisite number of columns is to have a double row of twenty-one along the sides, three rows of eight columns on the principle façade, two rows of nine columns at the rear, and the remainder filling the pronaos and opisthodomos (the front and back porches). Thirty-six of these columns, says Pliny, were carved with reliefs, one of them by Scopas, who also worked on the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus.
Beyond its architectural grandeur, the Temple of Artemis was not only a religious sanctuary but also one of the earliest known “World Banks” of antiquity. Immense wealth—gold, silver, and other valuables—was deposited there, safeguarded by the temple’s sacred status, and the Artemisium functioned as a place of international trust. In addition, the temple served as a place of asylum: criminals and fugitives could seek refuge within its precincts, safe from secular authority. Its protection extended, according to legend and cultic tradition, to the Amazon women, those mythical warrior women who were said to have found sanctuary and support in the Artemision. In this way, the temple was a convergence of sacred authority, wealth, protection, and female power.
The temple had taken one-hundred twenty years to complete. A variant reading indicates two hundred years, which is the approximate time from when construction of the temple began (about 560 BC) to its destruction in 356 BC. On the night when Alexander the Great was said to have been born, the temple was deliberately burned down by Herostratus, who, setting fire to the wooden frame of the roof, hoped to immortalize his name. Artemis, herself, was said by Plutarch (III.5-6) to have been absent from the shrine, assisting in the delivery of Alexander. The story of this infamous act is related by Valerius Maximus (Memorable Doings and Sayings, VIII.14.5), where he says that “A man was found to plan the burning of the temple of Ephesian Diana so that through the destruction of this most beautiful building his name might be spread through the whole world.” The Ephesians, however, decreed that his name never be recorded (Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, II.6.18), and it would not be known had not Strabo (Geography, XIV.1.22) revealed it (to be sure, the name had been preserved earlier but in a work now lost).
Although rebuilding on the original foundation soon began, the temple still was unfinished when Alexander the Great liberated Ephesus in 334 BC and offered to pay all its expenses, if he were to have credit for his generosity, but Strabo relates that the offer was refused by the Ephesians, who diplomatically said that “it was inappropriate for a god to dedicate offerings to gods” (XIV.1.22).
Weakened by earthquakes (in spite of its location on marshy ground) and burned by the Goths in AD 262 (Jordanes, Gothic History, XX.107), the ruins of the temple were used as a quarry for building the Byzantine city at Ephesus. What remnants survived would have been burned for lime and the rest allowed to slowly silt up beneath alluvial deposits. When Theodosius I closed the temples in AD 391, the Artemision already must have been in a ruinous state.
But even while the Artemision still was standing, there was exultation in its imagined destruction. The apocryphal Acts of John is a second-century Christian account of the apostle’s visit to Ephesus that, although dismissed by Eusebius as belonging to “the fictions of heretics…to be cast aside as absurd and impious” (Ecclesiastical History, III.25.7), is filled with wondrous tales. Threatening the population with death, he then prayed for God’s mercy that the deceived multitude might be shown their error. “And as John spake these things, immediately the altar of Artemis was parted into many pieces, and all the things that were dedicated in the temple fell, and was rent asunder, and likewise of the images of the gods more than seven. And the half of the temple fell down, so that the priest was slain at one blow by the falling of the roof” (XLII).
By the beginning of the fifth century AD, however, the Temple of Artemis surely was destroyed. In about AD 402, Prudentius writes that “the huntress maid resigned Ephesus to thee [Christ]” (Against Symmachus, II.495). Another Christian poet, Paulinus of Nola, says much the same thing a few years later, in January AD 405: “Diana, too, has fled from Ephesus, for John has thrust her out” (Poem XIX.95). Paulinus is referring to John the Apostle, but there was another of the same name who also was charged with the destruction of the Artemision: John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople from AD 397 to 403, who was given the epithet “golden mouthed” for his rhetorical ability.
Ironically, it had been learned from his pagan teacher Libanius, who wrote an poignant plea to Theodosius for the preservation of the ancient temples then being destroyed. Even though the emperor has “not ordered the temples to be shut up, nor forbidden any to frequent them: nor have you driven from the temples or the altars, fire or frankincense, or other honours of incense,” monks run to them, “bringing with them wood, and stones, and iron, and when they have not these, hands and feet….the roofs are uncovered, walls are pulled down, images are carried off, and altars are overturned: the priests all the while must be silent upon pain of death. When they have destroyed one temple they run to another, and a third, and trophies are erected upon trophies: which are all contrary to law. This is the practice in cities, but especially in the countries” (Oration XXX, Pro Templis).
“On receiving information that Phœnicia was still suffering from the madness of the demons’ rites, John got together certain monks who were fired with divine zeal, armed them with imperial edicts and dispatched them against the idols’ shrines. The money which was required to pay the craftsmen and their assistants who were engaged in the work of destruction was not taken by John from imperial resources, but he persuaded certain wealthy and faithful women to make liberal contributions, pointing out to them how great would be the blessing their generosity would win” (Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History, V.29).
